Blog Archives

Be careful what you do, what you say, and how you fly – Big Brother is watching. Apparently your friends (certainly not mine) at the FSDO get reports whenever you do something “wrong”. What does “wrong” mean? How about rejecting…

What’s been happening with the Montgomery Field Reconstruction project? Funny you should ask. One of us (the writer) has had hand surgery which made him so stupid (much stupider?) for a while that he had a hard time composing words,…

So … once again the forces of darkness make threatening noises towards another airport. Remember Meigs Field in Chicago? Now, Santa Monica is close to falling. First, let’s throw a couple of definitions at you: airport, n. sworn enemy of…

What does it mean to be “pilot in command”? We, as pilots, are familiar with the term, but do we really understand the responsibilities it conveys? I’m afraid that over the years I’ve come to believe that most of us…

Yeah, you. You know who you are. Why do you insist on angling your airplane towards the runway and dusting those of us who taxi past while you’re running up your engine? Is it that bloody hard to turn your…

Okay … I’m in full rant mode on this topic. How hard is it to communicate with ATC? Apparently it’s more difficult than anyone can imagine. I mean, we start communicating not long after we take our first breaths, don’t…

“Beware the ides of March,” sayeth the soothsayer in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. There were a lotta reasons why Caesar died: ambition, the pursuit of absolute power, and, perhaps, hubris, his excessive pride. We pilots enjoy the pride of our…

Okay, I know that all us airplane geeks need to band together and present a united front to groundlings, government slugs and other anti-aviation gangsters who want to restrict our flying pursuits … but I have to say it ……

Can you imagine: drama in the cockpit? It sometimes happens in flight training and, when it does, it’s got to be eradicated, eliminated, brutally and finally dispatched. You understand that as a student pilot you will be confronted by situations…